A piece of our mind / our blog

Summary: Testing with 5 users has become a commandment in UX research. Worse yet, a sample of 5 has become the rule, for any type of user research (field studies or diary studies). Sample size is a big deal in UX because it impacts your learning and decision-making. Skimp on sample size and you will likely cut yourself short of valuable insights.

For Usability Testing: If you follow Jakob Nielsen's advice: test with 5 users or less (2 users for low-fidelity prototypes) and do many iterations of testing (at least 3 rounds of testing). Our advice: if you have multiple user segments and you don't have time to play with 3-5 iterations, test with 8-10 users for prototypes, and 15-20 users for finished products. If you can, or need to iterate then a second round of testing should suffice.

Summary: This infographic summarizes 7 classic mistakes in approaching user experience design and process. The text of the infographic is below the image, with the addition of more summary notes not found in the infographic--look for “Comment” in the text version below for these exclusives.

Summary: Diary Studies are one of the most under-utilized and least understood UX techniques. Diary Studies are slightly more complicated than user testing and require additional know-how in study design, moderation and deployment. In this webinar and complimentary e-book, you'll learn how to use diary studies like a pro, avoiding the pitfalls inherent in diary studies.

Why Diary Studies?

Summary: Surveys are often over-used or mis-placed as a research technique that many teams rely on to figure out usability and user experience problems. Understand the limits and opportunities of the tool and instead either don't lean on it too heavily or use it as an adjunct to reach a wider audience--as part of a qualitative user research project (user interviews).

When Surveys Fail You

Surveys are great, except when they are not. Surveys are often used as a way to gather usability feedback. This makes sense, after all questions like: Do users use your site or app? Do they find it valuable? What do they want? are perfectly reasonable questions to ask your users. So what is the problem with surveys for user experience questions?

First, be clear that surveys are a market research tool. That means they are not entirely appropriate as a usability or user research tool. Why?

UX teams only work as well as they are managed. Many organizations have UX Designers and don't truly know what UX Designers are supposed to be doing. Hint: Creating gorgeous UI's is not the answer. Delivering value with UX is critical to acheiving the results a good UX team ought to bring. Yet, many an organization is faltering on managing UX Design to full capacity.

In this webinar, we will discuss the elements that help you maximize success in your organization. We'll focus on UX managment when it fails, but more importantly how to fix it!